NEW YORK — After a 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday night, his team’s second defeat in as many games to open the season, New York Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi was understandably glum. Here were the Blueshirts, picked in many circles to win the Stanley Cup this year, sitting winless after a pair of games in which they looked like anything but worldbeaters.

The Rangers also got off to a slow start last season, losing their first three games, and six of their first nine, before getting on track to win the Atlantic Division and advance to the Eastern Conference finals. But last year is a long time ago, and this is a new season with new expectations. Through two games, the Rangers have not played to match those expectations.

“I really thought, coming in, I thought guys did a great job of battling in camp, working hard, doing everything we were supposed to,” Girardi said. “I’m not sure, and I really can’t put my finger on the reason why we’re not playing the type of hockey we need to right now.”

Part of the reason is that New York has only played two games, and has played them against other elite teams in the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins. Back-to-back losses against those clubs would usually be perfectly understandable, but when they are the only games on the ledger so far, the appearance is far more grim.

Perspective can be difficult to grasp at the start of any season, when small sample sizes are all that is available to gauge performance. In 2013, especially with no preseason games, the task is even more difficult. It only serves to further complicate matters that the usual start-of-the-season clichés are unavailable. As Rangers center Brad Richards said on Sunday night, “We can’t use the ‘early in the season’ thing.”

Maybe not, but there are other trendy terms that are taking the place of the old standby phrases in the start-of-the-season hockey lexicon. The most common one revolves around the quality of play. If you’ve watched any games in the first three days of the 99-day season, you know that things on the ice have been sloppy. How sloppy? Real sloppy. Oh, man, has it been sloppy.

Jets winger Blake Wheeler: “It was a pretty sloppy game. I don’t think either team did a lot at all. It was not a lot of flow out there. It was a pretty bad game all around.”

Globe and Mail columnist Roy MacGregor: “To call the opening period ‘sloppy’ would be polite. A conflation of some players bringing four months of shinny to the rink, some players bringing a month or so of European hockey, some coming from Russia, from the minors, from junior, coaches not sure if it is ‘O’s’ and ‘X’s’ or ‘X’s’ and ‘O’s’ — and you have your mid-January opener.” Predators defenseman Shea Weber: “We knew it was going to be some sort of rusty or sloppy or whatever you want to call it.” Why has the play been sloppy? Weber nailed it. The players are rusty.

Oilers coach Ralph Krueger: “There was a little rust in the first period and we saw some holes in there defensively, but there was never a lack of effort.”

Hurricanes goalie Dan Ellis: “You’ve got to be ready for anything. There’s been a lot of time off and there’s going to be some rust. It’s going to take a little time to fine-tune things.”

ESPN New York’s Katie Strang: “The Blueshirts are sloughing off the rust just like the rest of the NHL, but if the issues troubling the team now are not rectified soon, there will be some legitimate cause for concern.”

Sharks winger Patrick Marleau: “It’s going to be a learning curve, a little bit of rust for all teams. You try and get those points as quick as possible, especially with a shortened season.”

Ah, yes, the season is shorter, dontcha know, because, well, let’s not get into the reason why. Just know that the importance of even the smallest things is higher because the season is shorter. The shortened season changes everything.

Flames winger Curtis Glencross: “Well, we all know how short the season is. You can’t afford to give up these points this early. You drop a couple of the first ones, you’re playing behind the 8-ball the rest of the year. We can’t afford that.”

Bruins coach Claude Julien: “There’s no forgiving in a short schedule. You can’t afford to sit on (a) past win and take that as automatic. We’ve got to start all over (with the next game). That’s part of what is going to make great teams – teams and individuals who are never satisfied and want to get more night after night. That’s what we’ve got to create here.”

Ducks winger Teemu Selanne: “I like to skate every day. My body feels better when I do every day a little skating. But especially with this schedule, you have to force yourself to take more days off and rest.”

Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville: “Our schedule, it was very challenging and we wanted to make sure that we put ourselves in a good position at the end of this stretch here.”

Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News: “The Red Wings understand in this shortened 48-game season, they have to get the taste of the ugly season-opening loss out of the way quickly.”

One important thing to remember, though, is that even if this season is shorter, it really still is early, and just like the Rangers struggled out of the gate last season, the results of the first few games of this season do not mean that highly-touted teams are bad, or that fast-starting teams will roll through the season.

Wait, Hitchcock isn’t in the same boat with everyone else’s buzzwords for talking about the start of the NHL’s 48-game season? That’s the kind of outside-the-box thinking that allowed St. Louis to enjoy a paradigm shift last season and shock the world to become Central Division champions. They have a good shot at first place again this season, and not just because they have overcome the leaguewide trend of sloppy play, brought on by rust, to get off to a crucial fast start in the shortened season.